3.5 stars for a nice little brewery with good yet limited beer selections.
My wife and I stopped by Broken Cauldron after attending the "Spread the Sparkle" event celebrating the life of legendary Yelper Colleen B. Broken Cauldron, which is located on Church Street near OBT (a fairly sketchy area right now, but one that should be getting much better once the stadium is built), helped host the event and allowed people to use their restrooms and park in their lot, which was a very kind gesture on their part.
Now, in terms of the actual venue itself, Broken Cauldron is a brewery (which you can see through some windows looking to the back) with a average size bar bar people to sit and hang out. While calling the bar small would be unfair, it does happen to be on the smaller side. However, what they don't have in size they make up for in fun design. They have a fun couch and lots of cool artwork all over the wall. There aren't very many televisions (I believe 2) in the bar, but they seem like a place focuses on having people try beer and hang out.
Trying beer and hanging out is what my wife and I did that day. While they only had about 10-12 beers in total (all on tap), they did have an interesting 4oz/8oz/12oz system that lends itself to trying various types of beers. While our Yelp friends decided to get a 12oz pour of the Victory Kirsch Cherry Gose (solid choice still), my wife and I decided to essentially get a beer flight by ordering 4 4oz beers: the Cherry Gose, the Saltwater Sea Cow Milk Stout, the Crooked Can Belgium, and the Black Cauldron Barleywine.
After tasting each one of the beers, we picked which ones we liked best and each finished 2. My wife finished the Cherry Gose (very good sour beer type) and the Belgium (typical solid Belgium). I finished the Milk Stout (a really solid stout that would have went great with food) and the Barleywine (which we both felt tasted absolutely terrible). While finishing the beers was fun, our two complaints about the place can be derived from our rankings. First, this place doesn't serve food. While it doesn't need to be a fully-service restaurant, the lack of other restaurants around it means they should at least offer a few snacks to go with your beer. Our second complaint was the Black Cauldron beer. Maybe it just wasn't in our wheelhouse, but it was by far the worst of our 4 beers. While I'm hopeful that the rest of their selection is much better, that awful aftertaste may make me think twice about trying their brand again.
Overall, Broken Cauldron is a nice little brewery that is worth checking out if you are in the area. While their limited selection and rough location might prevent people from going over very often now, their generosity with the "Spread the Sparkle" event, cool varied ounce pour setup, and close proximity to the new stadium gives me hope that they will continue to get better and better in the months and years to come. read more